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Journal of African trips

Africa, spring 1999 part II

Agelasto
2004-05-21 18:00:16

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of hiring an entire bush taxi for
ourselves, we find one heading to the port town of Elinkine. Here?s the way long-distance
transportation in West Africa works. Bush taxis with various destinations wait at the gare
routiere. There are usually several hundred taxis in a space about the size of a football
(soccer that is) field. Once a taxi is filled, it takes off and another in the queue (Question:
where is a queue not a line? Answer: at the gare routiere. Everyone seems to know the
next vehicle in order, although it might be a hundred meters away, headed in the opposite
direction, with no driver in sight) starts accepting passengers. How long you wait
depends, of course, on how many other people want to go to your destination. Today we
are lucky. We have to wait only a few minutes. We cover some of the same road, and
same roadblocks with the same policemen, as yesterday. On the way to Elinkine, we pick
up a middle-aged white woman who needs to go a few kilometers. She is a volunteer for
a small Catholic charity and she explains the operation to the three French people I am
traveling with. It sounds like two nuns against the world. That?s how much of the aid
operation in Africa works.

Abdou hires us a pirogue (canoe) and its two-man crew for the day. They take us to
Karabane Island, which is a village cum resort hotel and tourist stalls. The pirogue and
crew will wait for us for three hours and then take us for a trip through the mangrove
bolongs and back to Elinkine where we will find another taxi for the return trip to
Ziguinchor. As we walk around the island we first hear and then see what we are told is a
traditional dance. Villagers are moving and shaking in a dance line, with various native
instruments and chanting in the local dialect. It is what I would call modernized
traditional. For example, instead of wearing gourds around the ankles ...